Smoke! Guaranteed To Make Your Angels On Horseback Taste Better And All Sorts Of Things To Wrap Bacon Around

“The combination of briny, juicy oyster, clad in crisp, salty bacon is incredibly savoury. It is almost heavenly”

Lindsay Bareham and Simon Hopkinson, The Prawn Cocktail years

Bacon seems to make everything taste more interesting – rich, smokey, saltiness brings out the best particularly as a complement to fish and seafood, and to the sweetness of fruit. These amuse-bouches allay the pangs of hunger while awaiting a late dinner. There’s lots of appropriate music to listen to below as you consider the options.

Originally angels on horseback were made with fresh oysters, but I am not too keen on them (they can taste like phlegm!). However, smoked oysters are wonderful as well as easy (you buy them ready cooked in a tin).

Devils on horseback have the bacon wrapped around a dried fruit – prunes, apricots (with sage), and sometimes dates stuffed with mango chutney. For a bit of added fire you can soak the prunes first in cognac or Armagnac. Devils on horseback were often served as a savoury course (on toast with a watercress or rocket salad) but now they would also make a good starter. You can also wrap around fresh fruit – figs or persimmons.

“Prunes are black as hell and bloated, particularly if they have been pre-soaked in tea that has a generous slug of Armagnac added to it”

also from The Prawn Cocktail Years

A rather nice alternative to the fruit or the oysters is to use fried chicken livers and make chickens on horseback, or to use mashed up tinned (in oil) sardines and make sardines on horseback (the mind boggles!).

Chestnuts – the type you buy ready-cooked and peeled – are also good. So are chipolatas (pigs in blankets) which are good served with goose or turkey. Put the wrapped chipolatas (one slice of bacon to each sausage) on a baking tray and roast of half an hour.

Or you can marinate scallops wrapped in bacon in a mix of rosemary, basil, lemon juice and zest, salt, pepper, garlic and olive oil. Then fry on all sides, including the marinade which reduces to a sticky sweetness as it bubbles up.

If you serve a selection of different things on horseback, label them, as they all tend to look the same, and some people don’t like the fishy taste of smoked oysters!

If you are making devils, slit open the prunes and stuff with a teaspoon of mango chutney

Wrap oysters or prunes or chicken liver with the bacon

Pack tightly together on an oiled roasting tray so they don’t unravel

Bake for about eight minutes

Sprinkle angels with parsley and lemon juice, and devils with paprika

Serve with cocktail sticks

Faustian Bargain

I have also found a comment on the web by someone with the wonderful moniker of Faustian Bargain. He comments that chefs aren’t allowed to eat real food. Instead they are supposed to snack, but they are “allowed to swallow gallons of really bad coffee”. He then describes one of the accepted ‘crunchy perks’ as follows:

“Take a piece of bread and cut it into nice thick batons. Fry it in duck fat. Make a bed of sautéed minced shallots on a strip of bacon and place the crispy crouton in the middle, wrap the bacon strip around it and let the bacon sizzle on a hot pan until done.”

Angel and devil music

And here’s a selection of riding (Wagner); devil (Diana Krall, Devil May Care and The Rolling Stones, Symphony for the Devil); angel (Marlene Dietrich from the film The Blue Angel),; smokey (Bryan Ferry, Smoke Gets in your Eyes); and chicken music (Chicken skin band with Ry Cooder, He’ll Have to Go). By the time you’ve listened to that your bacon-wrapped canapés will be ready.

This post is dedicated to Faustian Bargain, whoever he or she is, with thanks